Editorial Note by Jim Mumm

The Timberline Institute (formerly the Feather River Institute) is comprised of a small group of acquisitions librarians, who get together each year to discuss acquisitions issues in greater depth than can happen in other forums. This year there were at least two law librarians who attended the institute, JoAnn Hounshell and Ann Kolodzey.

We are pleased to have the following report that Ann put together, which describes the different discussions she attended. We are always happy to have people submit articles whenever they attend workshops or other professional development activities. That is, after all, how the strength of our newsletter, as well as our own personal growth is fostered.

Timberline Acquisitions Institute
May 19-22, 2001
by Ann Kolodzey (Acquisitions / Serials Librarian, Widener University School of Law)

Librarians, publishers and vendors gathered from May 19-22, 2001 for the Timberline Acquisitions Institute, formerly the Feather River Institute. The planning committee, Bichard Brumley, Nancy Slight-Gibney and Scott Smith planned a relatively small (83 participants this year), informal gathering which lent itself to lively discussion of ideas, viewpoints and possibilities. Including non-librarians as participants rather than exhibitors enhanced the communication in all directions.

Frank D'Andraia from the University of Montana spoke about Deregulation and the Academy: Opportunities and Strategies Under the New Rules for Resource Gathering in the keynote address. The advent of e-commerce, the changes in scholarly communication and the deregulation of higher education all affect libraries. Distance learning is skyrocketing, information providers are listed on the stock market and scholars no longer need to go to the library. Virtual universities offer education without overhead cost associated with dorms, gyms, physical libraries or faculty research. They are market sensitive, convenient and flexible. Electronic access to information is leveling the playing field at all levels of education. Libraries will have to adjust to the changing environment by marketing themselves, upgrading OPACs and Web Pages, expanding special and unique collections and emphasizing staff expertise.

John Webb from Washington State University presented Collections and Systems: A New Organizational Paradigm for Collection Development. Changes in library collections require new ideas in collection development. The cooperation of systems people, vendors and teams of librarians is increasingly important to collection development. Mentors in the library profession and vendor exhibits can be good information sources. Being able to wheel and deal has increased importance with the use of expensive aggregator services. The linking of faculty courseware to libraryware also affects collection decisions. Improvements in navigation between the OPAC and specific information on the web is welcome, especially when returning to the OPAC is a click away.

After the morning presentations and lunch, Natalie Schultz from Griffith University in Australia addressed E-journal Databases - A Long Term Solution? Databases have been developed to handle electronic information purchases in ways which cannot be handled by the OPAC alone. Pennsylvania State University has developed ERLIC, an Access database, which is available as non-supported shareware. An e-journal database includes information to track information not easily tracked by library online systems, such as approvals, ordering, licensing, renewing, fees, consortial purchasing information and where the content is actually stored. Action notes can be added as ticklers to prompt future action. These databases can be powerful tools in addition to the OPAC to help manage the complexities of electronic information from the technical services point-of-view.

Evolution of the Supply Chain in Library Bookselling was covered by a panel. Jackie Coats from the University of Washington, Matt Nauman from Blackwell's Book Services, Brian Elliott from Alibris, Jeff Dixon from Amazon.com and Robert Rooney from Taylor and Francis shared their unique views in this exciting time of print and electronic possibilities. In the print world with current and projected sales increasing at 5% per year, about 500,000 books are in print, 400,000 are available on special order, 700,000 are listed as out of stock and 40,000,000 are out of print. There are 35,000 e-books today and 500,000 projected for 2005. E-book readers are not good enough yet to be the preferred mode of reading a book, but e-books and on-line ordering of paper books provide speed, ease in ordering and good prices. In summary, paper books are the largest sector of the market today, but as digital files are easier to store, reprints and print-on-demand books are more feasible and the electronic-only format sector will expand especially in the reference market.

Bonnie Allen from Oregon State University moderated a panel which presented E-Books The Latest Word. Katharine Phenix, from netLibrary described their web catalog of e-books which emphasizes information rather than reading and heavily supports business and economics information. Links to dictionaries with an audio component for pronunciation and book reviews are included. Information which continues across pages or is inserted in a pocket such as illustrations, tables, genealogical trees or large maps is hard to digitize. Robert Rooney from Taylor and Francis described the bumpy short run for the e-book business in which companies are coming and going. IP concerns for all formats are addressed in contracts with current authors, but old contracts must be must be modified to address new formats. Court cases will no doubt decide tricky cases in this area. Still the largest cost for the publisher is the first edition of a book in any format. Len Liptak described the 3-year old company, ebrary, which taps into the 300 million web-user market with electronic research tools. There is no cost to browse their collection, but downloading a book will incur a charge similar to purchasing a paper book and printing will incur a page charge similar to copying the page of a paper book. Their titles are mainly from academic presses and textbook providers. The MBA content is ready and other information areas will be ready soon. Quality information and security are ebrary's main concerns.

Accounting for Access ( Costs & Benefits) was presented by Karen Schmidt and Nancy Slight-Gibney who described some of the complexities of using statistics in the library. Counting the number of patrons in the library, connect time or number of hits for electronic information and circulation for print material, for example, are only indicators of value. Pricing models and formats are changing all the time making it even more difficult to track the past and predict the future. Quantity is not always quality, so statistics must be used carefully.

Karen Rupp-Serrano from the University of Oklahoma addressed Putting Theory into Practice: Needs Analysis. Analyzing syllabi and journal scatter studies are tools which can be used in the academic library to determine acquisition needs. Research needs must be considered in addition to teaching needs. National and local needs need to be identified. Analyzing the collection this way is useful for collection development and new bibliographers.

In Finding the Right Balance: Campus Involvement in the Collection Allocation Process Lisa German and Karen Schmidt from the University of Illinois described improvements to the budgeting process in their library. Hard work and improved communication between faculty, administration and librarians has led to redistribution of budget increases. Across the board budget increases had led to inequities collection development in different subjects. University departments submit proposals and part of each increase is reallocated accordingly.

Bill Fisher from San Jose State University spoke about the Impact of Organizational Structure on Acquisitions and Collection Development Functions. Small groups brainstormed to develop the perfect staff organization. From wrestling with the placement of staff functions which cross the traditional lines of public and technical services, several models emerged. The traditional pyramid structure with a director at the top and departments below seemed appropriate for a large academic library whereas a circle of librarians all reporting to the director in the middle seemed more functional for a smaller library. Finding the perfect organization to staff a library must evolve as functions change.